| In this dissertation, I investigate connections between ideology, material culture, and social change in the context of intentional communities. By their very nature, intentional communities are distinctive societies, where social structure and daily life are meant to directly reflect ideology. Because of this, intentional communities are ideal settings in which to investigate questions pertaining to the interaction between material culture and ideology. The ideologies of these groups often led them to restructure fundamental social relations, such as class, family, and gender, and community members deliberately incorporated such ideologies of social reform into the planning and organization of their societies. In these communities, material culture thus served as an active medium to both reflect and reinforce social and religious ideals, and therefore material culture can be seen as simultaneously constituted and constitutive.;As such, the use of material culture in intentional communities is not unconscious; community members are often keenly aware of the symbolic meanings represented in artifacts, and the leaders of these communities commonly develop explicit strategies using material symbols as a means of fostering communitas and group cohesion, with a large emphasis on ritualizing daily life. For example, intentional communities use material culture to set themselves apart from the outside world (e.g., through clothing, uses of technology, and industrial endeavors). They also use material culture to reinforce social relations within the group, and to reflect ideology and social structure (e.g., through landscape designs, subsistence practices, settlement patterning, architectural forms). Significantly, intentional communities also use material culture to reinforce aspects of community and ideology when under extreme pressure, either from the outside or within. In this way, intentional communities increase the longevity of ideal social structures that are often difficult to maintain.;Through the investigation of landscapes, architecture, and artifacts of daily life, I focus on central themes: the definition of millennial ideology; how daily life is ritualized through material objects; how these intentional communities adapt their material world in times of change; and the relationship of the individual and the community. Using data collected on two millennial communitarian groups, the Oneida Perfectionists and the Israelite House of David/City of David, I examine both how material culture reflects the communities' beliefs and ideologies and how these communities use material culture to reinforce these ideals. Central questions of my research include: How are the symbol systems for material culture created, maintained, and reconfigured in communal groups and what roles do they play in this type of social movement? These findings of this dissertation contribute to several wider discussions including: the study intentional communities; how material culture can be used as evidence of social relations and processes of culture change, particularly in reference to social movements, in cultural and historical anthropology; the use of historical archaeology in these endeavors; and the broader implications of this research for archaeology in general. |
